Shubnitsina E. I. Alexey Mezentsev — Genius Loci of the Kosyu River in the Subpolar Urals

Elena I. Shubnitsina 
Candidate of Engineering Sciences, «Yugid va» National Park
(Russia, Vuktyl)
ORCID 0000-0001-6198-7281
E-mail: shub07@yandex.ru

 Download | Back to the Content № 2. 2025

UDC 913(470.5)
DOI: 10.58529/2782-6511-2025-4-2-36-49

ABSTRACT. The subject of this research is the history of the Old Believers — settlers of the upper reaches of the tributaries of the Pechora River, using the example of the life story of Alexei Fedorovich Mezentsev, one of the last «guardians of the old faith» of the Pechora region, who lived in the 20th century in the village of Vangyr-Vom on the remote taiga river Kosyu. During the study, the author identified and analyzed documents on Mezentsev’s personality, tracked the main dates, events and facts of his biography, collected the contemporaries’ memoirs: fishermen and hunters, residents of the Pechora region, as well as numerous tourists from all over the Soviet Union. The article summarizes excerpts from documents, photographs, including those from the personal archives of veterans of the 1950s and 1960s tourism. Special attention is paid to the stories of the Mezentsev family by tourists who passed through Vangyr-Vom. For the first time, oral and written memories of meetings with the Mezentsev family are described and analyzed, it allows drawing a portrait of the inner and outer life of the family of a hunter and fisherman in the Pechora region. The importance of the personality of Mezentsev and the Vangyr-Vom izba in the history of the Pechora region, as well as in the history of tourism and local history in the Subpolar Urals is shown. Despite his simple origin and life «in the wilderness», Mezentsev was known throughout the tourist world in the second half of the last century, and tourist groups planned their routes through the Subpolar Urals with the expectation of resting/spending the night in his hut. The relevance of the topic lies not only in the retrospection of the events of a century ago: it has an applied significance for the formation of modern infrastructure on the tourist routes of the Subpolar Urals.

KEYWORDS: genius loci, Alexey Mezentsev, Vangyr-Vom, Kosyu, Subpolar Urals, Ural Old Believers

For citation: Shubnitsina E. I. [Alexey Mezentsev — Genius Loci of the Kosyu River in the Subpolar Urals]. Istoriko-geograficheskiy zhurnal [Historical Geography Journal], 2025, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 36–49. DOI: 10.58529/2782-6511-2024-4-1-36-49 (In Russian).

Received 1 December 2024
Accepted 15 May 2025

© 2025 The Author

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